Open Letter to Kevin Trenberth – NCAR

Subject: Your Blog Post at SkepticalScience and an Invitation from WattsUpWithThat

From: Bob Tisdale

To: Kevin Trenberth – NCAR

Dear Kevin:

I note that you were co-author of the SkepticalScience blog post Warming oceans consistent with rising sea level & global energy imbalance along with Dana Nuccitelli and Rob Painting. The obvious intent of your post was to convince the SkepticalScience readers that, while the global surface warming (outside of the Arctic) has slowed or stopped since the late 1990s, human-induced global warming continues in the deep oceans. There have been numerous blog posts at SkepticalScience over the past few years that have basically stated the same thing, so, from the sidelines, it appears you’re preaching to the choir.

One would think your time would be better spent trying to convince actual global warming skeptics why we should be concerned about global warming …especially when we consider that in your recent papers you’re acknowledging that natural variability plays a major role in the warming of the surface of the planet. With that in mind, this is an open invitation for you to author a blog post or series of them for WattsUpWithThat (or co-author them with skeptics…like me, for example). There are a number of points you may wish to address and they are discussed in the bulk of this post.

WattsUpWithThat has a much larger internet audience than SkepticalScience. Refer to the recent Alexa statistics here. If you’re not familiar with the Alexa rankings, the lower rankings are better. Point of reference: Google ranks first. Also note the bounce rates and the time visitors spend on both websites. Many more people visit WattsUpWithThat than SkepticalScience and they stay longer at WattsUpWithThat once they’re there. That suggests, of course, if you were to write a post for WattsUpWithThat, more people are likely to read it.

INITIAL COMMENT ON YOUR SKEPTICALSCIENCE POST

Assuming you’re correct and the deep oceans are warming instead of the surface, then your post at SkepticalScience likely appears to many readers to be nothing more than redirection—because it refocuses attention from the problems that climate models are having simulating global surface temperatures. The previous generation (CMIP3) and current generation (CMIP5) climate models cannot explain the current pause in global warming (that’s occurring outside of the Arctic), thus your recent flurry of papers on this topic. Also assuming you’re right, due to the heat capacity of the oceans, the claimed increase in subsurface temperatures of the global oceans (while the halt is taking place at the surface) is so tiny…so minute…so miniscule…that the additional warming of the oceans is not coming back to haunt anyone at any time.

While the topics of ocean heat and energy imbalance have a place in technical discussions, they are of no importance to people and policymakers who want to know how high global surface temperatures might rise in the future and why climate models did not forecast the cessation of global surface warming.

PAST COMMENTS

At WattsUpWithThat, we’ve already discussed many of the arguments you’ve presented…discussed them numerous times. See the posts from my blog (and the cross posts at WUWT in parentheses):

You may want to review those posts, because those are arguments you will face if you choose to author a post for WattsUpWithThat.

POINTS MISSING FROM YOUR ARGUMENT

The core of your recent argument is that there was a turn-of-the-century switch of ENSO mode from a period of El Niño domination to a period when La Niñas dominate. Further to your argument, this change in mode around 1999 has caused the tropical Pacific to release less heat than normal to the atmosphere and to redistribute less warm water from the tropical Pacific to adjoining portions of the oceans. You’ve also argued that the stronger trade winds associated with La Niñas are forcing more warm water to be stored in the western tropical Pacific. As a result, according to your argument, there has been a substantial decline in the warming rate of global surfaces (outside of the Arctic).

This strongly suggests that ENSO was also responsible for an extensive portion of the warming that took place while El Niño events dominated from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s. I don’t recall you ever stating that in so many words in any of the recent papers you’ve written on this topic, and I don’t believe, in light of your new understandings, that you’ve recently attempted to quantify the contribution of ENSO during that late 20th Century warming period.

Based on my research, ENSO—acting as a chaotic, naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled, recharge-discharge oscillator—was in fact responsible for the vast majority of the warming of global sea surface temperatures outside of the North Atlantic during the past 32 years (the satellite era)…and ENSO was also responsible for the vast majority of the warming of the tropical Pacific to depth…and ENSO, along with a shift in sea level pressure (and interdependent wind patterns) of the extratropical North Pacific (as captured by the North Pacific Index that you, Kevin, developed for such purposes) were responsible for most of the long-term warming of the extratropical North Pacific ocean to depths of 700 meters. Add to that the findings of Lozier et al. (2008) The Spatial Pattern and Mechanisms of Heat-Content Change in the North Atlantic. They found that all the warming of the North Atlantic to depth could be explained by natural factors. See the January 2008 article in ScienceDaily titled North Atlantic Warming Tied to Natural Variability about Lozier et al. (2008). The ScienceDaily article includes:

“We suggest that the large-scale, decadal changes…associated with the NAO [North Atlantic Oscillation] are primarily responsible for the ocean heat content changes in the North Atlantic over the past 50 years,” the authors concluded.

Those points were discussed in the posts linked earlier. They should be addressed by you if you elect to prepare a post for WattsUpWithThat.

DATA THAT CONFIRM AND CONTRADICT YOUR ARGUMENT

Based on your argument, the ocean heat content of the western tropical Pacific should be increasing during the hiatus period. In one of your recent papers you argued that the hiatus period started in 1999, with the switch from a positive to a negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which you’re using a proxy for ENSO modes. Figure 1 presents the NODC ocean heat content for the western tropical Pacific (24S-24N, 120E-180), for the depths of 0-700 meters, for the period of January 1999 to December 2013. We can see that the western tropical Pacific to depths of 700 meters has, in fact, warmed.

Figure 1

As you’re well aware, the TAO project buoys have sampled subsurface temperatures, etc., in the tropical Pacific since the early 1990s, so the NODC data should be a reasonably reliable there. Over the past decade, ARGO floats have supplemented the TAO buoys. And the source Ocean Heat Content data in the tropical Pacific for 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters (represented by the unadjusted UKMO EN3 data) during the TAO project and ARGO eras are exactly the same, see Figure 2, and that suggests that all of the variability in the tropical Pacific ocean heat content is taking place in the top 700 meters.

Figure 2

The NODC ocean heat content data also show the ocean heat content (0-700m) of the eastern tropical Pacific, a much larger region, has been cooling from 1999 to 2013. See Figure 3.

Figure 3

As a result, there has been an overall decrease in the ocean heat content of the tropical Pacific since 1999, Figure 4, and a substantial decrease in the ocean heat content of the tropical Pacific as a whole since the peak around 2004.

Figure 4

Therefore, based on data, there appears to have been a rearrangement of heat within the tropical Pacific and not an addition of new heat as your studies suggest.

Also, in the recent post If Manmade Greenhouse Gases Are Responsible for the Warming of the Global Oceans… I presented the NODC’s vertical mean temperature anomaly data for the Indian, Pacific, North Atlantic and South Atlantic Oceans, for the depths of 0-2000 meters, during the ARGO era (starting in 2003). Figure 5 is an update of that illustration, including the recently released 2013 data. The flatness of the Pacific trend indicates there has not been a substantial increase in the subsurface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean as a whole to depths of 2000 meters over the past 11 years…same with the North Atlantic. Manmade greenhouse gases cannot explain the warming in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, when they obviously have had no impact on the warming of the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to 2000 meters over the past 11 years.

Figure 5

You might argue that the recent warming in the Indian Ocean is a response to ENSO. I would agree. I discussed a number of topics in the post Is Ocean Heat Content All It’s Stacked Up to Be? One of them was the influence of ENSO on the warming of the Indian Ocean to depths of 700 meters. The following is that discussion. Note that I’ve linked the animations and revised the Figure number for this post.

[Start of a portion of “Is Ocean Heat Content All It’s Stacked Up to Be?”]

Why is the Indian Ocean warming during the ARGO era? Figure 6 compares ocean heat content data for the Indian Ocean (90S-90N, 20E-120E) to scaled sea surface temperature anomalies for the NINO3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific. Both datasets have been smoothed with 12-month running average filters. The NINO3.4 data is a commonly used index for the timing, strength and duration of El Niño and La Niña events. The ocean heat content for the Indian Ocean warms in response to El Niño events, but it obviously does not cool proportionally during strong La Niñas.

Why?

It’s simply yet another example of what I’ve been noting for a number of years: La Niñas are not the opposite of El Niños.

Figure 6

In the following animations, you can watch warm water that’s left over from the El Niños being passed from the tropical Pacific into the Indian Ocean during the trailing La Niñas by the current called the Indonesian Throughflow. That leftover warm water counteracts any cooling that would result during the trailing La Niñas due to changes in atmospheric circulation.

ANIMATION 1 presents maps of the NODC ocean heat content data for the ARGO-era, using 12-month averages. The first cells are the average ocean heat content from January to December 2003. These are followed by cells that show the period of February 2003 to January 2004, then March 2003 to February 2004 and so on, until the final cell that captures the average ocean heat content from January to December 2012. The 12-month averages reduce the visual noise and any seasonal component in the data. It’s like smoothing data with a 12-month filter in a time-series graph.

Due to the resolution of the ocean heat content data, you might be having trouble catching the processes that cause the leftover warm water from 2006/07 and 2009/10 El Niños to be carried into the Indian Ocean. ANIMATION 2 is a gif animation of sea level maps for the tropical Pacific from the AVISO altimetry website. The maps also capture the easternmost portion of the tropical Indian Ocean. I’ve started the animation in January 2003 to agree with the discussion of ARGO-era ocean heat content data. So there are a couple of minor El Niños before the 2006/07 El Niño. At the end of the 2006/07 El Niño, a (cool) downwelling Kelvin wave splits the elevated (warm) sea level anomalies along the equator. The residual warm waters are carried west by Rossby waves to Indonesia, and the stronger-than-normal trade winds in the Pacific during the trailing La Niña help to force the residual warm water past Indonesia into the eastern Indian Ocean. In addition to the Indonesian Throughflow, warm water from the southern tropical Pacific also migrates west into the eastern Indian Ocean through the Torres Strait, between Australia and New Guinea. The same thing happens after the 2009/10 El Niño. (My apologies for the shift in the animation in 2011. Aviso changed the format of the maps.)

[End of the portion of “Is Ocean Heat Content All It’s Stacked Up to Be?”]

A COUPLE OF QUICK COMMENTS ON TRENBERTH ET AL. (2014)

Thank you for linking a preprint copy of Trenberth et al. (2014) “Earth’s Energy Imbalance” to your SkepticalScience post. Sorry to say, I haven’t had the opportunity to study it in any detail. But I did take a quick glance. Thank you for including a number of ocean heat content datasets, in addition to the ECMWF ORA-S4. We’ve discussed the problems with that reanalysis in many of the posts listed at the beginning of this one, so I’m not going to dwell on it here…though I note you’re continuing to try to justify using the ORA-S4 reanalysis by showing that it responds to volcanic aerosols where other datasets do not. (Not surprising since the ORA-S4 reanalysis is the output of a computer model that’s forced to cool by volcanic aerosols.)

Also note your Figure 11, which I’ve included as my Figure 7, is missing a La Niña event.

Figure 7

According to the paper you used the old version of the ONI index (base years 1971-2000) as your reference for official El Niño and La Niña events. Clearly, you overlooked the strong 2010/11 La Niña that followed the 2009/10 El Niño. Also, moderate strength La Niña conditions existed during the 2008/09 ENSO season, but they didn’t last long enough to be considered an “official” La Niña based on the old ONI climatology. I’m not sure that helps you for 2008/09 or in 2010/11.

Again, I haven’t had the chance to examine your new paper in much detail. Sorry.

The negative feedback between SST and surface fluxes can be interpreted as showing the importance of the discharge of heat during El Niño events and of the recharge of heat during La Niña events. Relatively clear skies in the central and eastern tropical Pacific allow solar radiation to enter the ocean, apparently offsetting the below normal SSTs, but the heat is carried away by Ekman drift, ocean currents, and adjustments through ocean Rossby and Kelvin waves, and the heat is stored in the western Pacific tropics. This is not simply a rearrangement of the ocean heat, but also a restoration of heat in the ocean. Similarly, during El Niño the loss of heat into the atmosphere, especially through evaporation, is a discharge of the heat content, and both contribute to the life cycle of ENSO.

Thus my earlier description of ENSO as a chaotic, naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled, recharge-discharge oscillator…with El Niños acting as the discharge phase and La Niñas acting as the recharge phase. But La Niñas also help to redistribute the leftover warm waters from the El Niños—something that was very obvious in the animations linked above.

That quote from 2002 leads to a very basic question: how can you now suggest that the dominance of La Niña events in recent years has caused more greenhouse gas warming of the Pacific to depth, when La Niña events are fueled by sunlight?

To that end, if you should elect to prepare a blog post for us here at WattsUpWithThat, please document the downward shortwave radiation and the downwelling longwave radiation, both at the surface of the tropical Pacific, from the ECMFW ORA-S4 reanalysis, which you rely on so much for your recent papers.

The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries. But heat absorbed closer to the surface can easily flow back into the air. That happened in 1998, which made it one of the hottest years on record.

Trenberth says since then, the ocean has mostly been back in one of its soaking-up modes.

“They probably can’t go on much for much longer than maybe 20 years, and what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again,” he says.

You can think of it like a staircase. Temperature is flat when a natural cool spell cancels out the gradual temperature increase caused by human activity. But when there’s a natural warm spell on top of the long-term warming trend, the story is dramatically different.

“When the natural variability or when the weather is going in the same direction as global warming, suddenly we’re breaking records, we’re going outside of the bounds of previous experience, and that is when the real damage occurs,” Trenberth says.

First, once again, you’re suggesting that El Niño events caused a portion of the surface warming during the late 20th Century. It had to have been a major portion if a switch to La Niña domination could stop the surface warming. Why not simply come out and state it? Is it because people will then realize that by recognizing that a series of strong El Niños contributed to the warming from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s that you are also recognizing the models have overestimated the future warming? We already understand that…well, most of us do. And people also realize that you also haven’t included the influence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which also contributed to the warming during the late 20th Century. Why not simply state that the models predictions are too high and that they’re probably too high by at least a factor of two?

In the portion of your NPR interview I highlighted above, you suggest that a strong El Niño event can cause a big jump in surface temperatures. We understand that. I first presented those “big jumps” in sea surface temperature more than 5 years ago. And we also agree with you that El Niños are fueled by sunlight…which is part of the “life cycle of ENSO”, as you stated more than a decade ago. But I am very curious about why you seem concerned that “you never go back to that previous level again” after a big jump caused by a strong El Niño. That is precisely what we would expect to happen in a world where natural processes are causing the vast majority of the warming…a world in which the oceans show little influence from the effects of the increased emissions of manmade greenhouse gases.

The 1995/96 La Niña created the warm water for the 1997/98 El Niño via a reduction in cloud cover and an increase in sunlight over the tropical Pacific. The 1997/98 El Niño released that warm water from beneath the surface of the western tropical Pacific…and, in turn, it released a substantial amount of heat into the atmosphere…and an unfathomable volume of warm water was then redistributed around the global oceans in the wake of the 1997/98 El Niño. That leftover warm water prevented global surface temperatures from cooling proportionally during the trailing 1998-01 La Niña. The 1998-01 La Niña also served to replace the warm water in the tropical Pacific that was released and redistributed by the 1997/98 El Niño. Everything fits for a naturally warming world…a world that is not as sensitive to manmade greenhouse gases as simulated by climate models (climate models which still cannot simulate basic ENSO processes).

“THE PAUSE IS FICTIONAL; OCEAN WARMING IS FACTUAL”???

I suspect your co-authors Dana Nuccitelli and Rob Painting wrote that heading for the closing of the SkepticalScience post, Kevin. It’s comical and misleading. Data indicate the oceans are warming to depth, but the warming is not occurring in all ocean basins. Additionally, you, Kevin, wouldn’t have been spending so much of your time over the past few years trying to explain the cessation of global warming outside of the Arctic if the “pause was fictional”.

At the rate the global oceans have warmed to 2000 meters during the ARGO era, Figure 8, no one should really be too concerned about the warming of those oceans, especially when the data suggests it warmed via natural processes.

Figure 8

And no one should be concerned about the observed warming of the oceans to depth when we consider that the warming of the global oceans can cease for almost a decade, according to ORA-S4 reanalysis you continue to present. See my Figure 9, which is an annotated version of the first graph you presented in your blog post.

Figure 9

The following exchange is from the NPR interview linked above:

So will the oceans come to our rescue?

“That’s a good question, and the answer is maybe partly yes, but maybe partly no,” he says.

The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries. But heat absorbed closer to the surface can easily flow back into the air. That happened in 1998, which made it one of the hottest years on record.

But, again, the warm water for the 1997/98 El Niño was created via a temporary increase in sunlight beating down on the tropical Pacific as part of “the life cycle of ENSO”.

CLOSING

Thank you for considering the possibility of preparing a blog post or series of them for us here at WattsUpWithThat. Many of us applaud you in your efforts to explain the slowdown and cessation of surface warming, but there are many points that need clarification.

Additionally, we really appreciate it when authors of blog posts answer questions posed to them on the thread, so you should expect further exchanges.

Last, if this invitation interests you, please feel free to leave a comment at WattsUpWithThat. If you’d like the initial discussions to be off the record, please leave a comment at my blog Climate Observations where I still moderate comments. We can then discuss the matter further via email.

I think this is a fair invitation to a real debate of the issues. I hope that Dr. Trenberth takes you up on the opportunity. To the best of my knowledge it would be the first exchange of ideas of this nature in the history of the global warming issue.

I was told in a science class in school long ago that once upon a time scientists would debate each other in public on certain issues. Perhaps the professor was pulling our leg, but I have always believed that a public debate by people looking to find the truth would be a good thing.

Thankyou for a fine Open Letter. It remains to be seen what – if any – response is obtained from Kevin Trenberth.

There is much to like in your letter, and I especially enjoyed this

First, once again, you’re suggesting that El Niño events caused a portion of the surface warming during the late 20th Century. It had to have been a major portion if a switch to La Niña domination could stop the surface warming. Why not simply come out and state it? Is it because people will then realize that by recognizing that a series of strong El Niños contributed to the warming from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s that you are also recognizing the models have overestimated the future warming? We already understand that…well, most of us do.

I would heartily welcome any co-operative and genuine scientific input from Kevin Trenberth. I welcome real science from any real scientist, so long as the research adheres strictly to the scientific method, is open, examinable, testable, repeatable, falsifiable with nothing hidden or adjusted to force data to fit a hypothesis.

I have always been of the opinion that the data should lead the investigation and not be some form of a religious adherence to a hypothesis. Even if the actual data pointed to extremely catastrophic runaway global warming, I would still hold that view. The data clearly does not support a hypothesis for catastrophic runaway global warming, at least not yet, and so this is why I am sceptical of the CAGW hypothesis.

So long as Kevin sticks to the science, I will greatly welcome his contribution to the research effort.

I would like, for example, for those who promote the deep ocean warming hypothesis to explain:
A) the mechanism by which heat can decide to switch from warming the surface atmosphere, into warming the deep oceans instead, with the addition of reference to why none of the (CMIP5) climate models projected such a switch? And how such models can be fitted with that mechanism?
B) How such warming managed to defy the laws of physics and sink to such low depths?
C) How the warmth managed to skillfully avoid all the ARGO buoys as it sunk to a depth where it cannot be measured?

If Trenberth is correct then the miniscule rise in deep Ocean temperature will have an even more miniscule effect on surface temperatures.
If (as is likely) he is wrong (because the miniscule rise may be within the error range of measuring instruments) then the result is no surface temperature change.
Surely this is apparent even to the thickest alarmist?
To co-author a report with Dana says it all.
[snip – no personal stuff please – mod]]

“The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries. But heat absorbed closer to the surface can easily flow back into the air. That happened in 1998, which made it one of the hottest years on record”

I take odds with this statement.

Firstly water can only exchange heat with the atmosphere when the water surface temperature is greater than the atmosphere, this doesn’t occur very often in the tropics and if it did it would be at night. For the most part the “climate shifts” are caused by the storminess that the higher evaporation from warm water causes as it cools. Secondly I call foul on warming can go in to the deep oceans and linger for centuries. Pure Rubbish, water is NOT an insulator, any warming in the deep ocean will get dissipated into the total mass of the ocean basin where the salinity is not stratified. Heat will not sit in uniform water “For centuries” even our best vacuum thermos flasks couldn’t do that!

The absurd conga of climate scientists with Trenberth in the lead has finally and very unwillingly conga-ed to the right place in the search for explanation for climate trends, to the oceans, but very unwillingly, only in desperation because the unmeasurable deep ocean offers a fig leaf of an excuse for the cessation of natural cyclical warming that they were trousering as AGW.

So Trenberth looks as if he is finally doing some climate science and seeing global temperature shifts in the light of ENSO, joining the stampede of scientists plagiarisimg Bob Tisdale’s long established theories in this regard.

But he’s clearly new to the game and he’s got it wrong. The nonlinear dynamic heating (NDH) that explains the ENSO derived lift to global temperatures, is more, not less, during phases in which as he correctly says (parroting Bob) that el Nino predominates over La Nina. That phase of asymmetry produces more NDH than the reverse phase when La Nina predominates over El Nino – the phase that we have now turned into.

There is clear evidence for a reduction in heat input to the oceans in the most important signal in this reslect, the deceleration of global sea level rise which climate scientists, while doing their best, are unable to conceal.

Will the climate community come to the right conclusion after exhausting all the alternatives? Who knows?

“THE PAUSE IS FICTIONAL; OCEAN WARMING IS FACTUAL”
But I thought the pause was a pause in surface warming? That is what the predictions had been about.
Apples and Oranges.

Perhaps this was the work of Dana Nuticelli. It seems to be deliberately misleading and that is the fingerprint of Dana Nuticelli.
But I question why anyone who would co-author anything with Dana Nuticelli can also be expected to have any interest in discovering the truth.
Yet, reaching for the truth is the work of scientists.

To add to these arguments, if more warming were happening in the oceans (anywhere) resulting in a net ocean heat content growth, that means the sea level rise should then be faster now than in previous decades, especially considering the added heat in combination with the reported increase in glacial melt rate. Unfortunately I don’t know whether the amount of ‘missing heat’ results in a predicted sea level rise that would be significantly different from previous trends. Can anyone answer if it should be, and if so has anyone done this analysis as a proof for or against the Trenberth theory?

A debate between Trenbeth and Tisdale would be very welcome. Trenbeth might refuse because of pressure of time, he might refuse because he is afraid that his arguments would not survive critical discussion or, he might refuse because he is an intellectual snob. My advice to Trenbeth would be to find the time, put your ideas to serious challenge and forget any pretension to intellectual elitism. After all, as a professor, if you have any real sense of what that means, fulfill your vocation and profess.

I would be very interested see what Dr. Trenberth has to say. I fear that rather than any other reason an apprehension of the response of his peers is more likely than not to prevent his commentary on this site. You also have to bear in mind that not everyone who comments here has an open mind and that sometimes comments can be less than complimentary or not entirely on topic despite the best efforts of Anthony and his team.

But fortune favours the brave and it would be fantastic to hear from him. Frankly I suspect that extreme points of view that are held at either end of the spectrum on climate issues are as wrong headed as each other. More reasonable discussion is only to be welcomed.

I browsed your comments, Bob. I have a simple rule when people talk about global warming. No mention of sunspot activity = stupid = man-made global warming. The mention of sunspot activity = smart = done their home work. In none of his work is one sunspot chart show. Thus, a browse.

Bob, I love reading your stuff. One thing that occurs is that you create puzzles which are then resolved, provided one reads enough. In particular I have been wondering what happens to the Pacific Warm Pool during an extended period without an El Nino. Clearly there can’t be an indefinite buildup of warm water and associated increase in local sea level. So isn’t there also a process of leakage in which warm water disperses in a non-El Nino fashion? Here you point out the existence of flows through the Torres Straight and the Indonesian Throughflow. Excellent. Of course that raises another question: when these flows continue for an extended period, do they trigger additional oceanic and climatic events? I’ll keep reading.

“One would think your time would be better spent trying to convince actual global warming skeptics why we should be concerned about global warming”

Clever Brother Bob. Let’s hope he takes the bait :) By directly engaging the “sceptics”, and on their home turf, he’ll be giving credulity and acknowledgement that the “sceptics” arguments aren’t complete guff – and the “sceptics” will be invited into the big kids playground

If extra carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere traps extra heat over, say, the Ukraine, and the prevailing winds blow this warmer air gently Eastwards for 4000 miles until it can dump the extra heat in the Pacific, surely some of the thermometers along the route – not to mention the satellites – should pick up a signal from this (temporarily) warmer air, no?

I am not so sure heat is in fact accumulating in the deep ocean at the rate surmised by Trenberth. Using reanalysis products like ORAS4 to assess trends is surely a joke. Depths below 2000 m are not measured, increse down to 700 m is negligible during the past decade and there is a huge unexplained mismatch between annual cycles of CERES EBAF ToA net radiation balance and ARGO OHC data down to 2000 m since 2005, when initial faults of floats got corrected so they could venture to that depth without the risk of getting stuck there.

My bet is OHC data actually have way larger error bars than claimed, so adjusting biased CERES imbalance to them is not justified.

If you’re truly interested in getting Trenberth to respond, you need to change your tactics.

How about submitting a “Your Dot” contribution to Andy Revkin’s blog Dot Earth at the NYT?
Kip Hansen has done the same. Provokes some lively discourse (plus, quite admirably, has roughly equal participation from the two main camps in the comments section). Revkin’s blog has regular guest postings as well as occasional comments from some of the prominent scientists and other pundits in the climate sphere.

eburke93 says:
January 31, 2014 at 5:14 am
‘It’s not a “travesty.” It’s just not good strategy. RichieP, do you insult your guests as you invite them to dinner?’

Should the gentleman courageously decide to put his head in the lion’s mouth and risk real debate, I will grant him all the respect that deserves by accepting. The likelihood of that is, I guess, vanishingly small, which is why I quoted his own emailed words at you. I was going to say as likely as hell freezing over, but, since both Hell, Michigan, and Hell, Norway, have already done so this year, it seemed unwise.

Ocean heat data is the result of splicing many different data collection methods together. I’d suggest it isn’t very useful and likely to lead people astray more than provide any kind of “information”. However, this is not unusual in the field of climate.

In addition, not enough effort has gone into the understanding the deep ocean currents that may be the driver of the entire process.

Don’t expect reply especially given the numerous questions you expect him to reply to. Also if you wish an official reply mms publish your research and answer peoples commentaries. You are not going to be able to draw him into a discussion here.

“Clever Brother Bob. Let’s hope he takes the bait :) By directly engaging the “sceptics”, and on their home turf, he’ll be giving credulity and acknowledgement that the “sceptics” arguments aren’t complete guff “.

I’m sure he knows that already, and that’s why he and the other believers will run a mile rather than debate with expert skeptics.

Clever Brother Bob. Let’s hope he takes the bait :) By directly engaging the “sceptics”, and on their home turf, he’ll be giving credulity and acknowledgement that the “sceptics” arguments aren’t complete guff – and the “sceptics” will be invited into the big kids playground

You seem to have misunderstood.

Trenberth is being invited to leave “the big kids playground” and to join the adults in the workplaces of science. Hence, Trenberth can lose the travesty of his present credibility, and he can demonstrate that the childish excuse of his “missing heat” hiding in the oceans is not “complete guff”. Indeed, he is being offered an opportunity to show his “guff” is more credible than ‘the dog ate the homework’.

And I was not aware you are related to Bob Tisdale. It explains much. Clearly, Tisdale’s great intelligence results from him inheriting all the family intelligence genes and, thus, leaving you so depleted that you are a Village idiot.

Dana Nuticelli is an Environmental Scientist working for Tera Tech a company who is expanding its services to the Shale Oil Market.

Jun. 6, 2012 Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEK) announced today that it has acquired Rooney Engineering, Inc. (REI), an oil and gas pipeline planning and engineering firm based in Colorado. REI has worked on projects across the United States, including in Alaska and the Gulf Coast, but many of the firm’s current clients are strategically located in the Bakken and Niobrara shale oil regions. REI generates annual revenue of approximately US$30 million.

“Tetra Tech has strong capabilities in water resources and front-end environmental permitting for oil and gas projects, while REI’s pipeline planning and engineering credentials are among the strongest in the United States,” said Dan Batrack, Tetra Tech’s Chairman and CEO. “Together we can offer the rapidly growing shale oil market more comprehensive services. We are pleased to welcome all REI employees to Tetra Tech.”….

So how come Anthony is the one the propagandists try to hang as connected to Big Oil?

It is amazing to me that so-called “scientists” try and argue that heat sequestered in the deep oceans (if any) can at some point in the future come back out and make temperatures rise.

Is Trenberth an ignoramus? If he had any knowledge of thermodynamics he would understand that while energy is conserved, the ability to do work is degraded. Heat that once existed in a high temperature form in the air, once converted to heat at a lower temperature in the deep oceans (around 4C) cannot cause temperatures to rise any higher.

For heat to pass from a low temperature to a high temperature of its own accord is a physical impossibility, and would it were otherwise, all sorts of crackpot free energy schemes would be instantly viable. You could have heat in the ground flowing into metal rods until they glowed red hot and use them to turn water into steam and . . . well, you know the rest!

So, Dr Trenberth, if you should deign to come into the big boys playground (as Village Idiot rather ironically put it), please explain this marvellous notion that heat will spontaneous flow to a higher temperature. If you can, I’ve got a generator that you plug into the ground to sell you.

What people need to realise is that warmists have been blindsided by the cessation in the rise of surface temperatures. All the costs of CAGW have been expressed in terms of what happens when surface temperatures rise too much. Now they have taken up the excuse that the warming is still continuing, but it is happening in the oceans. Over on Climate Etc. I have asked the question, what is the climate sensitivity of CO2 expressed in terms of OHC. No-one can answer the question.

What the warmists are trying to do is to sell, the idea that CAGW is still a menace, but the proof of this lies, not in surface temperatures, but in ocean heat. That, of course, is a load on scientific nonsense.

What I’d like to hear is am explanation for the above graph, showing a long term decrease in atmospheric moisture. This is clearly opposite to the predictions of Climate Science that atmospheric moisture should increase with global warming, and in fact is the basis for the predicted 3x amplifying effect of CO2 warming.

This graph clearly shows that we are not seeing any amplification of CO2 warming. Rather, what we are seeing is that moisture is going in the opposite direction to that predicted by CO2 theory, which in any other field of science would be the proof that the theory was wrong.

Trenberth would only agree to a debate on the dutch Climate Dialog site. That’s the invitation he should be offered. And he wouldn’t want one on one debate. Rather, it would be a many-on-many debate. But that would be good enough.

” This strongly suggests that ENSO was also responsible for an extensive portion of the warming that took place while El Niño events dominated from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s. I don’t recall you ever stating that in so many words in any of the recent papers you’ve written on this topic, and I don’t believe, in light of your new understandings, that you’ve recently attempted to quantify the contribution of ENSO during that late 20th Century warming period.”

bobl: “I call foul on warming can go in to the deep oceans and linger for centuries. Pure Rubbish, water is NOT an insulator, any warming in the deep ocean will get dissipated into the total mass of the ocean basin where the salinity is not stratified.”

I’d agree. Centuries are unlikely, though there could be circulations and phases in the deep oceans in large variatey of timescales. In fact, the existence of these cyclical and chaotic circulation and heat distribution patters on the surface suggest to me it is unlikely that such things don’t exist in the deep ocean as well. But yeah, most of this heat is likely to be trapped for thousands of years.

I find the assumption that SW and LW radiation are in equalibrium at all time frames other than the very short term a very poor assumption. I doubt that the large difference in incomeing and outgoing radiation (other than the small component attributed to increased GHGs) is entirely an artifact of intstrumentation/methodology. I’ll suggest that the radiative budget is naturally out of balance on many timescales, and very long ones.

bobl says:
January 31, 2014 at 4:02 am
Secondly I call foul on warming can go in to the deep oceans and linger for centuries. Pure Rubbish, water is NOT an insulator, any warming in the deep ocean will get dissipated
===============
doesn’t the conduction of heat in water move at the speed of sound? about 4 times faster than in air. somewhere around 3000 miles per hour. this would suggest that water will quickly try and equalize any heat imbalance, as it would travel around the world in 8 hours.

Glad to see you continuing to blog, Bob. I see these “open letters” of yours as a very effective rhetorical device. I’d be amazed of K.T. actually responds and I’m sure you’d be too…though anything is possible. But either way, you perform an indispensable service by calling these guys out. Trenberth as you say is only preaching to the choir over at the humorously named SkepticalScience site, but WUWT with its large population of readers draws in warmists who are open to changing their minds. I know this because a few years ago I was one of them.

One of Bob’s points is very simple. The admission that natural processes caused the pause is an admission that natural processes caused the temp rise in the last quarter of the last century. Kevin probably knows this, and must admit it some day.
==========================

There seems to be some evidence suggesting that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) may be going into a prolonged negative phase. The cycle could last for 70+ years. What overall impact would this have on global temps?

Clever Brother Bob. Let’s hope he takes the bait :) By directly engaging the “sceptics”, and on their home turf, he’ll be giving credulity and acknowledgement that the “sceptics” arguments aren’t complete guff – and the “sceptics” will be invited into the big kids playground.

Ain;t going to happen.

IF Kevin was to actually respond to Bob it would be an admission that the septics are right and requires Kevin to eat crow.
Snowball’s chance on that idea.
I would venture to guess that Kevin has just a little too much hubris.

Question: How do humans heat up the lower layers of the ocean without heating the surface?? I have a suspicion it can’t be done, but I suppose I could be wrong.

One thing that readily comes to my mind is the fact that heat rises. If you were to put a heating element on the ocean floor, it would cause a column of warm water to rise to the surface and of course cooler water would come in from around the element to fuel convective currents. That’s elementary school science, I know because they taught me that in 4th grade if I remember right.

No amount of carbon (the CAGW alarmist’s favorite bogeyman) could warm the lower layers without also, somewhere, warming the surface– again because of convection– so somehow I’m missing how, exactly, this would happen

Question: How do humans heat up the lower layers of the ocean without heating the surface?? I have a suspicion it can’t be done, but I suppose I could be wrong.

I’m surprised no one has thought of this, it’s actually pretty easy, in theory.
In the Arctic cold water sinks to the bottom, and is then carried south in the ocean conveyor. All you’d need is for the cold water to be a little warmer than it’s suppose to be from a warmer planet. That would carry warmer water straight to deep water.

Box of Rocks says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:08 am
IF Kevin was to actually respond to Bob it would be an admission that the septics are right
============
Or that Kevin was sure of his facts. More likely he knows there are lots of holes, with more developing each day, and he is having troubles plugging them.

Dr. Kevin Trenberth – CRU emails – 12 Oct. 2009
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low”¦.

James Strom, I’ve suggested the same before. I think this is a place Trenberth is likely to find a good part of his missing heat. My suggestion is that some heat is transferred to a current that moves into the deep ocean (perhaps this isn’t plausible, but I’m sure there could be other mechanisms). Long persistent neutral and la Nina conditions transfer a large amount of heat into the deep ocean and lead to mild el Ninos. Strong la Ninas followed by an el Nino produce strong el Ninos and release more heat to the atmosphere.

“9 Jul 07 – Researchers have counted 201,055 underwater cones, 10 times more than have been found before, and estimate that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes, 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 meters over the sea bed.”

So we have missing heat deep in the oceans but apparently volcanoes add nothing to the temp of the ocean.

Why, oh why would Trenberth co-author an article with a dope like Nuccertelli. Climate scientists have enough credibility issues without getting involved with the likes of the Nuccertilli’s and Cook’s of this world.

I agree however with some earlier commenters that Trenberth, who is not by any means the least credible in the field, could do his reputation a great deal of good if he took up the challenge Tisdale offers.

I hope Dr Trenberth takes up this offer. For too long the two sides in this debate have been either side of a fence. The warming people dismissing all who question their views as not much better than worthless morons, and the skeptics similarly dismissive and generally being ignored. Both sides are convinced they are right and will be vindicated in time, which will of course one side will.
Trouble is, huge sums of money are following the warming people in attempts to ” decarbonise” the world. We need a big coming together of the sides in this stand off. Get together in full scientific discussion and debate and sort out issue and agree the best way forward.

Mi Cro says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:16 am
Question: How do humans heat up the lower layers of the ocean without heating the surface?? I have a suspicion it can’t be done, but I suppose I could be wrong.

I’m surprised no one has thought of this, it’s actually pretty easy, in theory.
In the Arctic cold water sinks to the bottom, and is then carried south in the ocean conveyor. All you’d need is for the cold water to be a little warmer than it’s suppose to be from a warmer planet. That would carry warmer water straight to deep water.
****

Oh, I have wondered how much is being returned from the arctic. I suspect that we do not have a good feel for the temperature of the water as it leaves the Arctic.

I guess one back check would to look at the temp of the water going into arctic since the water goes round and round and where it stops nobody knows!

It would be interesting to see the water temps both entering and leaving the arctic plotted against time. I would put into perspective how much energy is radiated into space.

“eburke93 says:
January 31, 2014 at 4:50 am
Stop the name calling people. If your goal is to have Mr. Trenberth to accept the invitation, insulting him is a really dumb way of “encouraging” him to accept.”

All the posts leading up to yours show no name calling outside of ‘closeted skeptic’, so I don’t understand your complaint.

Trenberth 2002: “This is not simply a rearrangement of the ocean heat, but also a restoration of heat in the ocean. Similarly, during El Niño the loss of heat into the atmosphere, especially through evaporation, is a discharge of the heat content, and both contribute to the life cycle of ENSO.”

Well, there you have it. From that description it should be evident that larger amplitude variations in El Ninja ;) La Ninjo cycles will produce global warming.

Years ago, when public climate scepticism first reared its head, we were told by the AGW promoters that we shouldn’t listen to the likes of McIntyre, McKitrick & Watts because, although they had relevant expertise in statistics, meteorology etc, they were “not proper climate scientists”.

Now the hard core original “hockey team” are happily endorsing the amateur musings of completely unqualified activists.

Trenberth puts his name to a paper with Nuccitelli.

Real Climate endorse the Cowtan & Way paper by two previously unknown activists – which claims to “correct” the surface temperature records assembled by teams of “proper” climate scientists over decades of work at enormous cost.

Numerous serious climate scientists happily requote the Cook et al “97%” rubbish, in the full knowledge that it only represents the opinions of anonymous bunch of activists.

Why have the climate hardcore crowd suddenly abandoned the “peer reviewed science” faith in favour of joining up with any self-promoting activist who shouts loud enough?

Could it be that they’ve circled the wagons for their last stand – only to find they don’t have enough proper scientists left to man the guns?

mjmsprt40 says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:11 amQuestion: How do humans heat up the lower layers of the ocean without heating the surface?
The deep oceans may be about 3.0 C and my understanding is that they warmed up by 0.09 C over the last 60 years. I do not know how accurate this is, however conduction and convection from warm surface waters at 30 C over time could slightly warm the lower depths and the change is so small that the surface really does not need to be heated to a degree we can measure in order for the depths to get some heat.

Nuccitelly literally invented a graph with squiggly lines, and attributed this graph to Lindzen, supposedly based on something he said in a talk, which is baseless on its face, but one of the most ridiculous things about the graph is that it doesn’t even line up with the observed or prior temps at the time the talk was given.

Nit to pick, recalling remarks by Willis to the effect of “if you disagree with something I wrote, then quote EXACTLY what I wrote”, I think this WUWT post would have been marginally better if Kevin Trenberth had been “quoted” as per the “Willis Quote Doctrine” (grin).

Otherwise an awesome olive branch, one of many previously offered (idea for a WUWT post – catalog all previous olive branches and the reactions to such).

Unfortunately, if Peter “Wire Fraud Identity Theft” Gleick is an example of how the Alarmists deal with olive branches, recalling how Peter lashed out at Heartland when they offered a similar olive branch to speak at their annual dinner, we can expect Bob Tisdale et al will suffer some sort of short-lived, temporary scandal faux-embarrassment at the hands Kevin Trenberth et al as they lash out in the manner of Peter “Wire Fraud Identity Theft” Gleick.

Hi, Bob. I like your stuff – a lot! I just wish the tone of your writing was more professional, and less sneering. That goes for many other of my fellow skeptics. I am not immune to temptation to sneer, mock, ridicule, and patronize my alarmist brothers and sisters, but I try to separate it from my scientific arguments aimed beyond the choir. I know the alarmists do it, but we should be better than that.

There are people, like my wife for example, who do not have either the inclination or background to evaluate in depth the scientific arguments for, and against, climate alarmism, but who have come down on the skeptical side because the tone and conduct of the alarmist side is so repellent.

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525
“Second, many researchers have found the opposite pattern in simulations with full climate models, which factor in the suite of atmospheric and oceanic interactions beyond the equatorial Pacific. These tend to reveal a trend towards more El Niño-like conditions as a result of global warming.”
See what they did here? The global climate models, which admittedly don’t model ENSO properly, are used by the the CAGW crowd to prove or disprove other theories regarding ENSO and whether AGW’s impact on ENSO results in positive or negative feedback. That’s like me using a ballistics model to tell you whether a cruise missile will hit its target.
The CAGW crowd has always assumed (hoped) that the true atmospheric physics, which occur on tiny molecular scales, are adequately summarized by broad generalizations/parameterized within their models without losing too much of the true physics. At the same time the models have even been acknowledged to have large regional uncertainty and clearly do not take long term ocean cycles into account. The IPCC reports themselves claim to have a good global average forecast and hindcast record but with larger problems when you look at the regional scale. This makes absolutely no sense and is a strong hint that the global average results are either luck, fudge, or both.
The small scale dynamics are the truth (and are way too hard to model at this time). The global averages are the result and are BUILT ON the regional scales (which are built on other smaller scales until you get down to the parameterized level). You can’t get an accurate global average projection without having even more accurate regional projectionsThey claim they can get there without going through those wickets, and do not acknowledge that the regional forecasts are a truer test of the models performance vs reality than the global averages.
This does not disprove AGW or CAGW theory completely in and of itself, but it goes a long way towards discrediting how confident they have claimed to be in their case and demonstrates how biased they have been in their decision/assumption making. So how much should we trust these guys to accurately capture the ENSO cycle, among others? The more I learn about CAGW science, the less I believe it.

Foxgoose at 8.21am
says: ‘could it be that they have circled their wagons for their last stand – only to find that they don’t have enough proper scientists to man the guns?’

They are still there shooting. In London today, the President of the Royal Society wrote on ‘Climate Change’ in The Times, quote:

‘There are uncertainties about predicting the exact future impact of such changes, but the Royal Society’s and IPCC’s evidence-based and scientific approach gives us the best possible insight into what may lie ahead and should be the basis for discussing the policy decisions related to this issue.’

If trenberth were right, then the current pause which is occuring at a later time, should be of less magnitude than the 60’s/70’s cooling phase, and sea level rise should be increasing faster than ever before (even more than predicted in previous climate models). This is because there is more CO2 in the air now AND positive feedbacks have had more time to develope and compound. Meanwhile the evidence on which he rests his argument (deep ocean temprature) is so sparsely covered by data which reminds me of the huge aerosol fudge that had previously been used to explain the 60’s/70’s cooling phase and has been so unceremoniously replaced by the cold ENSO phase realization. How they can toss out such a huge, short duration fudge and replace it with a similar magnitude long term cyclical fluctuation, and expect similar results, is beyond me. If their models had PREDICTED ENSO PHASES before we knew about them, that’s the sort of thing that would lead to more confidence. Instead we are left trading fudge. Fudge traders.

WattsUpWithThat has a much larger internet audience than SkepticalScience.

If for no other reason than they kick people off of their web site that say things that they don’t want to hear. I’ve been kicked out since December of 2012 for saying that one of their posts was a straw man argument which it was. Maybe Anthony could run a poll of “Watts Up With That” readers to see how many have been tossed out of SkepticalScience. And maybe who cares.

Really Kevin Trenberth posted over there? One would think that an above board bona fide scientist would avoid the rabble of posting on a blog, including this one.

A lamentable paper by Peter Stauning who , in case it was not evident from the rest of the paper, proves he has no idea about climate science by writing :

“But secondly, there must be a fair global coverage such that localized climate variations like the North-Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), or the El Ninjo/La Ninja in the Pacific would not affect the result too much.”

The pal review must have pretty much a rubber stamp for no one to have seen that glaring error.

Bob, I’m all for the recharge oscillator idea but please get yourself a decent filter from somewhere. Those pointy bits should not be there after a 12 mo filter so they are spurious artefacts. How can you or anyone else draw any info from a distortion of the data?

Now with the best will in the world, I can not see a correlation there, other than maybe the long term trends being negatively correlated. The curve at the end of the data is also completely anti-correlated, so any idea of “proportional” or not seems irrelevant.

If you want to go head to head with Trenberth you can’t leave yourself wide open like that.

He may be in clinical denial about his missing heat but he does have a fair idea what he’s talking about.

A completely hopeless exercise.This is not a scientific argument but a conspiracy by the PtB to convince people their lives are endangered and so must listen to the dictates of the enviro red nazis who will ensure that we will be forced into energy poverty and the US will lose its status as an independent country in all but name. Arguing with dishonest propagandists like Trenberth will never produce anything of use.

@ferdberple at 6:55 am doesn’t the conduction of heat in water move at the speed of sound? about 4 times faster than in air.
Have you ever filled a warm bathtub. Then turned on the hot. Don’t you slosh the water around to spread it?
How about turning on the hot water tap? Do you get immediate hot water or does it warm up slowly as heater water displaces water in the pipes?

@bobl at 4:02 amwater is NOT an insulator, any warming in the deep ocean will get dissipated

Water is not an insulator. But it’s thermal conductivity is almost an order of magnitude lower than rock. So if you are going to move heat around in the deep ocean, then the ocean bottom becomes a non-negligible element in the model.

Indeed, heat flow from the ocean bottom into the ocean is a poorly sampled, and highly diverse flux field. http://www.und.edu/org/ihfc/marine.jpg
You sure cannot treat the ocean bottom as a thermal insulator.

A lamentable paper by Peter Stauning who , in case it was not evident from the rest of the paper, proves he has no idea about climate science by writing:

“But secondly, there must be a fair global coverage such that localized climate variations like the North-Atlantic Oscillation (NfAO), or the El Ninjo/La Ninja in the Pacific would not affect the result too much.”

The pal review must have pretty much a rubber stamp for no one to have seen that glaring error.

It is a troubling pattern along with the apparent decay of the TAO ENSO buoys and the tendency to write off ENSO as white noise.
There seems to be a contempt for ENSO reflecting active denial of inconvenient data. Bob correctly identifies ENSO as a nonlinear oscillator of the recharge-discharge type. ENSO rubs peoples’ noses in the inescapable fact that, at least one major natural system oscillates by its own internal dynamic, not requiring any external forcing. This blasphemes the myth that every climate change however small must be of human origin. It also undermines the absurd notion of cimate stasis being either desirable or possible.

However there is a rich literature on the nonlinear dynamics of ENSO but like Bob’s research it is being ignored by an elite who dislike its obvious message.

@ferdberple at 6:55 am
“doesn’t the conduction of heat in water move at the speed of sound? about 4 times faster than in air. ”

Yes, last time I was on holiday in Greece I say local people fishing. They throw a bucket of hot water into the sea. The sonic shock wave concusses the fish and they float to the surface. The locals just have to go out is a rowing boat and scoop them up!

Not a chance. Play your own game, never punch down. If you want Trenberth to talk to you, you’re going to have to get into his arena and fight to publish in the peer-reviewed literature. Heinlein: “Of course the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you–if you don’t play, you can’t win.”

All you’re really doing, is helping Trenberth identify the weaknesses in his research. He will publish again, and his research will be the better for it, but your contribution will never, ever, be attributed.

Greg Goodman says: “Bob, I’m all for the recharge oscillator idea but please get yourself a decent filter from somewhere. Those pointy bits should not be there after a 12 mo filter so they are spurious artefacts. How can you or anyone else draw any info from a distortion of the data?…”

For Figure 6 in the post above, I used a 12-month running mean filter, centered on the 6th month. I redid the graph with updated data below, starting again in 2003 to represent the ARGO era.

Now, using a low pass, 12-month 1st order LOESS filter (available as an option through the KNMI Climate Explorer), I basically get the same results.

I’ll stick with the running mean, because most people can understand it and replicate it.

There’s also the issue of sea level rise, whose main contributors are melting glaciers and ice sheets, and thermal expansion (water expanding as it warms). Climate scientists have been able to close the sea level ‘budget’ by accounting for the various factors that are causing average global sea levels to rise at the measured rate of about 3.2 millimeters per year since 1992 (when altimeters were launched into space to truly measure global sea level). The warming oceans account for about 35–40% of that rate of sea level rise over the past two decades, according to the IPCC AR5. If the oceans weren’t continuing to accumulate heat, sea levels would not be rising nearly as fast.”

This is a bunch oh hooey! Warming below 700 meters causes almost no thermal expansion. The thermal coefficient of expansion for sea water is almost zero at the 3 to 4 degrees celsius temperature associated with water below 700 meters.
Sorry Trenberth, your hypothesis is a complete failure.

It”s not necessary to get Trenberth to agree to a debate. The Dutch government’s Climate Dialog website could simply announce that they have scheduled a discussion of the Trenberth and Tisdale papers–or, better, of the whole oceans-ate-my-warming thesis–in two month’s (say) time, and say that they will start registering credible participants for their top-level discussion. Trenberth wouldn’t have to participate if he didn’t want to.

With 95% confidence, I state KT will not answer. He might ask the question, “Who’s paying me?”, but I would expect that will be his only reply.

Bob, I’m on your side here, but we should understand this post is just an opportunity to state your views and know you will never get a response. Nevertheless, we appreciate your hard work.

I enjoy the related information in the comments. PLEASE, everyone, check what you wrote before hitting the “Post Comment” button. Some errors are so egregious, it makes me embarrassed to be on the same side of an argument. At least this post doesn’t muddy the idea, as many others do. “IF Kevin was to actually respond to Bob it would be an admission that the ***septics*** are right and requires Kevin to eat crow.” A followup post correcting an error is useless, as the damage has been done. We look like dum-aces. A little more care, please. Thanks :)

doesn’t the conduction of heat in water move at the speed of sound? about 4 times faster than in air. somewhere around 3000 miles per hour. this would suggest that water will quickly try and equalize any heat imbalance, as it would travel around the world in 8 hours.

I have no idea what, precisely, you are referring to here, but no, no, a thousand times no. Maybe a billion times no. A whole lot of no. It’s always good to look things up. How fast waves propagate isn’t completely irrelevant to conductivity, but heat conduction isn’t a wave phenomenon; it is more akin to diffusion. The measure is called the conductivity. Here is a table:

Air is a terrible conductor of heat, but is pretty good at carrying heat by convection and is moderately transparent to thermal radiation for medium scale distances (less than maybe ten meters) in non-GHG-blocked bands. Water is a better conductor of heat, again excellent at transporting heat via convection, adds in the possibility of carrying heat by adding latent heat of evaporation/fusion to convecting air, but STILL sucks as a conductor at around 20x the conductivity of air. Copper — now copper is a good conductor. Diamond is a SUPER conductor (but not a superconductor, sorry). Copper is around 800x better than water. Diamond is around 1800 times better than water. It would be difficult to maintain a temperature difference across a moderately sized chunk of diamond. It’s easy to maintain a significant temperature gradient in water.

That’s really the thing, you see. If water were a GREAT conductor, it would be at a very uniform temperature. It’s not. It’s highly stratified, and the ~4K temperature of over 90% of the oceanic water doesn’t conduct the surface heat down much at all! Which is a very good thing — if it did, the Earth would be an iceball. Instead, most of the ocean is within a few degrees of freezing, regardless of latitude or time of year. If you swim in the warm surf in the tropics, you are enjoying the fact that water is a pretty poor conductor of heat. Go down a few meters and it is cooler. Go down 100 meters and it is cold. Go down 200 meters and it is colder. Go down 1000 meters and it is 4K or colder, pretty much all over the world, from there to the bottom:

Numerous serious climate scientists happily requote the Cook et al “97%” rubbish, in the full knowledge that it only represents the opinions of anonymous bunch of activists.

Why have the climate hardcore crowd suddenly abandoned the “peer reviewed science” faith in favour of joining up with any self-promoting activist who shouts loud enough?

Could it be that they’ve circled the wagons for their last stand – only to find they don’t have enough proper scientists left to man the guns?”

They are hoping to somehow get through this global warming “pause” before everything falls apart completely, in hopes that the warming will soon resume. Then, they can go back to the way it was before, with global temperatures rising and their theories and models just needing some slight adjustments but still very much intact.

As somebody that trades commodities for a living, I can tell you exactly what it’s like to “get married to a position” After analyzing fundamentals and doing painstaking work to predict where the price of a commodity is going, you put on a large position and risk a tremendous amount of money based on confidence that you are right. If it initially goes in your direction, you may add to that position as your confidence increases.

But then, something unexpected happens and the price starts moving the other way. Humans tend to be biased(with big egos) and look at new data/information in a way that confirms what we think we know instead of like scientists(or professional traders) that look for why we might be wrong. We look for reasons to justify previous actions and to reinforce ourselves/ego’s that we are really right and are actually smarter than the market (of in this case, other scientists).

At this point, for a trader a critical decision has to be made if the position, now quite large is going against them. Am I really, really so smart that I know things all these other traders don’t that make up the market or have I miscalculated and possibly overlooked something.

There actually are some really, really smart traders that at that point, decide to stay through a painful drawdown, still confident that they are right…………and the price/market turns around resulting in them making a really, really lot of money.

However, even the smartest traders are wrong sometimes. The difference between somebody that is smarter than the market most of the time and makes a living off of it and somebody that is smarter than the market most of the time and goes broke is that one of them trades based on admitting they are wrong sometimes and takes immediate actions to cut their losses before their account blows out.

What I see right now with the current climate science/global warming crowd on one side, is a bunch of people that don’t know when to cut their losses. They refuse to adjust the position(s) accordingly to account for the last decades worth of empirical data that is going much differently than what their initial position was based on.

Instead, they are justifying why they are still right by finding reasons DIFFERENT than what they gave or knew about 15 years ago for why things are temporarily producing a drawdown for them but fully anticipate it to go back in their favor.

Trenberth is not worried about convincing skeptics at all. He needs to keep the other side from losing faith during this temporary pause. When the warming resumes, he needs them to still be there with him and THEN he can focus on proving to the skeptics that he was right all along.

Ten years ago, it was easy for him to crush the few skeptics around since our planet had just had 2 decades of warming.
Bob is a gift to us here and is an unmatched authority in his field. His credibility has been growing, thanks to what our planet has been doing. Trenberth’s has been dropping. He is no match for Tisdale and certainly not on Tisdale’s home turf or terms. Not here, not right now.
I’m thinking Bob is well aware of this too.

This would be like today’s heavy weight boxing champion of the world challenging Mike Tyson to a match. At one time, everybody knew he was the best but he’s way past his prime.

Tyson will probably never try to make a come back but you never know.
Trenberth has never retired and is just waiting for the warming to resume so he can make his big comeback. Then you can have your match Bob Tisdale.

If warming does accelerate, then we should all make the correct adjustments in how we view the world………….except those that have never lost the FAITH.

There is a fundamental problem with Kevin’s hope to find his missing heat “injected” deep into the tropical western Pacific by the trade winds in the course of ENSO cycles. The deep ocean over there is 1000 years old.

There are several fundamental problems with Kevin’s notion that GHG’s are warming the oceans so the heat can be injected. The first is that in order for GHG’s to warm the oceans, they must also warm the atmosphere, and it is very clear that is not happening. The second is that Carbon dioxide is evenly distributed, and the patterns of ocean warming and cooling are not.

So if I understand you correctly — Trenberth’s basic premise is that heat goes into the ocean depths and raises the water temperature there by a tiny faction to something like 4 degrees centigrade. Trenberth then contends that this slightly warmer water will eventually rise to the surface and heat the atmosphere which is already say (I really don’t know) 40 degrees centigrade. This means (by Trenberth logic) if you put a bowl of water into a freezer it would eventually boil.

Good letter, Bob, but I don’t think anybody in their right mind would ever reply to an “open letter”, whether a scientist, politician, or tradesman. There is no upside for them to do so, and if I were Trenberth’s advisor, I would tell him to ignore the letter.

Remember, Bob, you are preaching the choir, and Trenberth will gain nothing in debating you, no matter how smart and credible you are.

There is lots of good material in what you write, and I thank you for that and your effort to keep our eyes on the real issues.

Mighty gentlemanly offer you make to Trenberth there Bob.
He will not respond, that would be “old science” not “Travesty science”.
The irony will show up in a couple of years.
By then Team climatologists will be desperate to engage, to be seen to be participating in actual science and public debate.
By then the worm will have firmly turned, these kind of fads collapse very fast.
So while K Trenberth could engage now, return to the practise of science and argue his theory, he will not.
When it is too little too late, he will be aggressively seeking attention.
As layoffs loom, funding vanishes and politicians rant about seeking financial redress from those “who so badly mislead the public”.
For as most of us know and government scientists will learn, politicians are never responsible.

john robertson says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:10 pm
“Mighty gentlemanly offer you make to Trenberth there Bob.”

Yeah, John, I guess it looks that way. But, after more than a quarter of a century as a sales and marketing manager, I have learned when to keep my mouth shut. This is one of those times for Trenberth unless there is an overwhelming reason to engage Tisdale with real science. The NYT or any other major media outlet won’t publish such a debate, anyway. Therein lies the strength of the Team’s position.

‘But listen, Saruman, for the last time! Will you not come down? Isengard has proved less strong than your hope and fancy made it. So may other things in which you still have trust. Would it not be well to leave it for a while? To turn to new things, perhaps? Think well, Saruman! Will you not come down?’

as far as I am concerned I would not waste too much time with the AMO and PDO etc
what is important is the amount of energy being let through the atmosphere, because that is what hits the oceans.
a good proxy for that is maximum temperatures
this is my graphhttp://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
which came from my own data set.
From the look at my own tables, it looks earth’s energy stores are depleted now and average temperatures on earth will probably fall by as much as what the maxima are falling now. I estimate this is about -0.3K in the next 8 years and a further -0.2 or -0.3K from 2020 until 2038. By that time we will be back to where we were in 1950, more or less…

Bob Tisdale says: “Now, using a low pass, 12-month 1st order LOESS filter (available as an option through the KNMI Climate Explorer), I basically get the same results.”

Thanks Bob. I’ve never bothered using a LOESS since it does not have a definable frequency response. It has a frequency response that depends upon and changes with the data !! WTF use is that?

So I would have NO real idea what I was doing to the data if I used it. Like I say, I’ve never experimented with it because its essential properties as a filter are undefined. Look at the way it turns later data into a linear up and down ramp, letting through plenty of high frequencies to make it pointy, pretty much proves it is crap as a ” low -pass ” filter if you intent that to imply high-stop filter.

Exactly the same defect as simple runny mean.

“I’ll stick with the running mean, because most people can understand it and replicate it.”

Very few people “understand” what a running average does , including many climate scientists who are happy to use without having the slightest understanding of how to chose a filter and why it matters.

Neither is what “most people” think they understand a criterion for choosing a filter.

If you want to go around throwing down the gauntlet to professional scientists you’d better get beyond RM “smoothers” and trend fitting in Excel.

You have had some useful insights but I suspect even Trenberth would run circles round you.

Vince Causey says:
“You could have heat in the ground flowing into metal rods until they glowed red hot”.
————————-
Well of course you can, it’s millions of degrees down there, don’t you know? ;)

If Mr. Trenberth and Mr. Tisdale were to engage in debate on this excellent forum it would be an amazing coup for WUWT and a chance for Mr. Trenberth to be the leading light in a new era of meaningful engagement between the mainstream scientific establishment and the (growing) distributed, “amateur”, peer-to-peer network of science experts the internet has enabled. We can all learn from each other, after all, so what’s not to like?

Greg Goodman says: “This is what the data looks like if you DO remove the 12mo and higher componentshttp://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=n5mqh1&s=8#.UuzejqJg8rR
“However, all that does not change essential form in respect of the correlation or lack thereof and how it affects you main point about lack of ‘proportional’ cooling.
“I would quite like to see a good demonstration of that point since it is important but neither your graph, nor a correctly filter version, supports that for Indian Ocean and Nino3.4.”
# # #
You had to have downloaded the raw data, Greg, to create your graph, so you could have done it yourself. Did you bother to look at the raw data, Greg? The only thing I’ve done is scaled the ENSO index in the following graph:

As we can see, the ARGO-era Indian Ocean OHC warms in response to the 2006/07 and the 2009/10 El Niño events but does not cool proportionally during the trailing La Niñas.

Apparently, the filter you chose to present, Greg, smoothed the data beyond recognition, while the two filters I presented did not.

Greg Goodman says: “Some of your earlier graphs made the point better before you started adding ‘volcanic corrections’ which are grossly over-estimated and are at the heart of AGW logic.”

I present data and the outputs of climate models. I’ve illustrated and discussed on numerous occasions that climate models show no skill at being able to simulate global surface temperatures, precipitation, sea ice area in either hemisphere, etc. Therefore, climate models have little use in attribution studies or as tools for predicting future climate. That is, climate models are still not fit for their intended purposes. Additionally, ocean heat content data and satellite-era sea surface temperature data strongly suggest that the oceans warmed not from manmade greenhouse gases, but in response to naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled, coupled ocean-atmosphere processes…that are still beyond the capabilities of climate models.

The climate science community is well aware of my work. They’re regular visitors here and at my blog. I don’t believe they would be inclined to allow me to present my findings outside of the blogosphere. Consequently, I have little interest in wasting my time trying to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The climate science community has made no effort and shown no want to police itself through peer review. Numerous climate model-based studies are not supported by data, so they have no value…yet they are constantly being published, then exaggerated by the media. It’s my opinion that the climate science community won’t clean up their act until the public is made fully aware of the field’s shaky foundation.

To that end, I would be happier having an op-ed published in the NYT. There, I’d have the potential for a very wide audience. Sadly, my latest submission was declined. Would you be interested in helping me pass through the gauntlet at the NYT? I suspect not.

It’s remarkable how much agreement there is between Bob and Kevin Trenberth on the nuts and bolts of ENSO. Their difference seems to be selective interpretation, for Bob the el Nino phase explains away the warming, for Kevin the La Nina phase explains away the pause. Different sides of the same coin?

I’m puzzled by what Bob and Kevin both say about the Indian ocean, which in el Nino dominated phases warms, and in La Nina dominated phases – also warms. Has this ocean ever, or can it ever, cool?